In abdominal minimally invasive surgery such as liver resection, a laparoscopic camera is used to provide the surgeon with a visualization of the anatomical area of interest. For example, when removing a tumor, the surgeon's goal is to safely remove the tumor without damaging critical structures such as vessels.
To plan the surgery, a pre-operative image scan (e.g., CT/MRI) is typically used to identify vessels and abnormal tissue and create a three-dimensional segmented model. It is common for this three-dimensional segmented model to be made available during surgery on a monitor, while images generated via the laparoscope are displayed on a separate monitor. Although this provides additional information to the surgeon that may be useful in performing the surgery, it is generally challenging and error-prone to fuse the three-dimensional pre-operative models and laparoscopic images into a single space. For example, the tissue in the anatomical area of interest may be deformed compared to the pre-operative model due to patient respiration and movement between the pre-operative and intraoperative settings. Additionally, the laparoscopic camera generally provides a small field of view that limits the amount of information that may be used for registration of the pre-operative model. Moreover, for some tissues, registration is further complicated due to a lack of tissue surface texture and the lack of common landmarks across modalities.
Thus, it is desired to provide a surface reconstruction and registration technique that allows accurate stereo reconstruction even where the tissue surface lacks texture or has limited texture, provides for registration across modalities where there is a lack of shared landmarks, and correctly adjusts for tissue deformation.